Testimony by a refugee from central Karenni (Kayah) State and List of Villages Relocated in March 1992.

An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
December 31, 1992

The following account of some of the SLORC’s activities in central and northwestern Karenni (Kayah) State was given by a Karenni refugee who arrived in the Karen Revolutionary Area in late 1992. His name has been changed and personal details omitted to protect his relatives and friends still living in Ler Ba Ko, which is in Deemawso Township. Please feel free to use this information in any way which may help free these people from their current slavery under the SLORC.

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Name: Saw Bleh Say        Age: 32
Family: Married with 3 children.

I came all the way here because many people in my area want to get away from the SLORC, and this is the only place to come. But now that Saw Hta has fallen, I don’t know how people will be able to make it here anymore.

The SLORC has always had an office in Ler Ba Ko. They routinely took us as porters. All the villagers had to go on a rotating basis. Each family had to send someone at least once a month for 3 days as a porter, or sometimes as often as 3 times per month. Sometimes the men ran away, and then the SLORC took women as porters. I heard that the soldiers raped 2 of the young girls of our village when they were porters, but I don’t know the details.

Depending on how many they needed, the SLORC often took the young and the old to be porters; they didn’t care about how old people are. The youngest person I saw them take was 15, and the oldest about 65. Back then being a porter wasn’t as horrible as it often is now; we had to take our own food, and weren’t usually beaten or abused too badly because those soldiers knew they had to stay in our village. People in all the villages around had to go as porters like that.

In 1991 almost everyone had to go work at the Loikaw - Aung Ban railway for about a month. The SLORC took leaders of every village to the work site, showed them each the work assignment their village would be forced to do, and gave them a deadline. They told the village leaders, "If your village doesn’t finish the work by the deadline we will arrest the village leaders." It is impossible to say no to the SLORC.

To finish on time, the whole village had to work from before dawn to after dusk. It was a long way from the village to the railway and we all had to bring our own rice. Our village had to hire 3 trucks to take us the 12 hour trip all the way to the railway. Each truck cost us over 10,000 Kyat. The villagers had to collect all this money among ourselves. Everyone was very angry, but we all had to pay because every one is so afraid of the SLORC.

At the railway, one group of us had to carry earth to make the railway embankment, another group had to carry stones, and so on. The embankment had to be 26 feet across at the base, 9 feet high and 15 feet across at the top. 300 people from my village had to make 1 mile of embankment like this. It was brutally hard work, breaking and carrying rocks and dirt. It was rainy season, and the railway goes across fields that were all soft and muddy, so some villages built the embankment and it just collapsed, and then they had to start again. It took a long time. We had to make huts in the jungle and sleep there. Our village took a month to finish, and some others took one and a half months. The SLORC had allowed us 3 months to finish the whole embankment from Mo Yeeh to Pay Kon. All of us had to go to the railway again for a month in July 1992.

In March 1992, all the villagers in Ler Ba Ko were forced to build 70 huts about 200 yards outside the village. Then about 500 people whom the SLORC had forced out of the villages came to stay there. It was like a refugee camp. The people had to bring their own food, and now once a month they are allowed to go back to their home villages to get some more. Each month they all have to go at the same time, and the soldiers go along with them as guards. Most of the villagers have a one year supply of food in their village, so for now they still have food, but soon they’ll run out and then they’ll have nothing to eat. Apart from once a month with the soldiers, they’re never allowed to go to their homes, because the SLORC has made the whole region a Prohibited Area. The Ler Ba Ko villagers are still allowed to leave our village, but the people in the camp are not allowed to go anywhere. There are 40 soldiers in Ler Ba Ko who guard them.

In the camp there is nothing for the sick - people just have to try to cure themselves. Three or four children had already died of disease in the first four months. All of the people have to go as porters like before, and they are also used all the time to do other work for the Army, like going to cut wood, building barracks for them, and many other kinds of work. The people in the camp have to do much more work for the Army than the Ler Ba Ko villagers. No one in the camp has dared try to run away yet. They are all too scared of the SLORC, so whatever they are ordered to do they just have to do.

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 VILLAGES IN THE BISHOPRIC OF LOIKAW
WHICH WERE FORCED TO RELOCATE BY SLORC IN MARCH 1992

The majority of these villages were forced to move into Deemawso and Pruso relocation camps (see related reports). Everyone in these villages was instructed that they would be shot it they refused to move or were found in the area after March 25 1992.

A) Deemawso Township

B) Pruso Township

Addreviations:   R.C.: Roman Catholic
                         M.T.P.: Mieta Pyammasoe
                         T.K.T.: Ta Khun Tie

Totals:

76 villages in 13 village tracts and 2 townships.
15, 481 people in 2, 667 homes.

By nationality: 10 Kayan, 5 Kayan Kagan, 27 Kayaw, 23 Bwe Kayaw, 9 Manu Manaw, and 2 Kayah villages.

By religion: 57 Roman Catholic, 13 Baptist, 3 Ta Khun Tie, and 3 Mieta Pyammasoe villages.